If you’re running a business, it can be challenging to get a handle on exactly what level of service your customers are receiving, and more than that, whether or not they are happy with that service.
Having tangible data on how customer service is being provided is essential if you want to identify areas where you can improve your service and ultimately keep your customers happier.
What is business intelligence?
Business intelligence means using software and data services to gather information about your business. This information is then analyzed and turned into insights that you can act upon in order to improve business performance.
For example, in a customer service setting, you might use a Business Intelligence (BI) tool to record call types and call duration. Using this information, you can start to understand which types of calls take the longest to resolve, which is information that is useful to you when deciding where to focus your training or which areas of your business you want to try and make more ‘self-service’ by taking them online.
Allows you to measure team performance
Using business intelligence within your customer service function allows you to monitor customer service KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) to give you better insights on things like customer satisfaction and customer retention. It can also give you insights into team performance, which gives you the opportunity to address issues as they begin to arise rather than once they have already become an issue.
For example, you might notice that performance in a certain team has declined ever since a particular line manager was employed. This would give you the opportunity to speak to that line manager and help them to work more effectively with their team, both so that customer service is improved and your team is happy within their working environment.
It helps you to understand what customers want
BI can be used specifically for customer interaction intelligence, allowing you to monitor things like customer engagement.
For example, you might notice from using your BI tool that emails sent out on one subject were opened by 60% of customers, whereas emails on another subject were opened by only 20% of customers. This tells you what kind of content your customer base is generally engaging with.
You can also take this further and begin to form insights on which demographics are engaging with which types of content, which in turn can help you to more effectively target your marketing campaigns.
It shows you where you can innovate
Using business intelligence gives you the opportunity to see where you are performing well and where you aren’t, using real data. It also gives you the ability to spot opportunities for you to get ahead of the competition.
Using BI, you can start to understand your customers’ mindset more and more, which means that you can start to understand what they want and when they want it. Using this information, you can offer new products and services which you know will be popular because you have the data to back it up.
Not only does this enable you to make better decisions, but it also gives you better information with which to back up your decisions to shareholders and board members.